1. Technical Field
The present invention relates to an electrostatic-image-developing toner, a production method thereof, an electrostatic image developer, and an image forming apparatus.
2. Related Art
Methods of visualizing image information via an electrostatic image such as electrophotographic method have been utilized in various fields recently. In the electrophotographic method, an electrostatic latent image is formed on an image holding member through charging and exposure steps (latent image formation step), the electrostatic latent image is developed with an electrostatic image developer (which may hereinafter be called “developer”, simply) containing an electrostatic-image-developing toner (which may hereinafter be called “toner”, simply), and the image is visualized through transfer and fixing steps, As the developer used herein, a two-component developer composed of a toner and a carrier and a one-component developer using only a magnetic toner or a nonmagnetic toner are known. The toner is typically produced by a kneading grinding method. In this method, a binder resin such as thermoplastic resin is melted and kneaded together with a coloring agent such as pigment, a charge controlling agent, and a releasing agent such as wax and the resulting mixture is then cooled, ground and classified.
As a method capable of intentionally controlling the shape and surface structure of the toner to satisfy a demand for improving the image quality, a production method of a toner using the wet process is proposed. In particular, suspension polymerization method, emulsion polymerization aggregation method, and the like are methods for producing toner particles having a particle size as uniform as possible in order to achieve a high image quality.
In addition, as the wet process, a solution suspension method of dispersing and suspending a binder resin and a coloring agent, which have been dissolved or dispersed in advance in an organic solvent, in an aqueous medium and then removing the organic solvent from the suspension by heating or pressure reduction to obtain toner particles is known. This production process is advantageous in that it provides toner particles having a highly uniform particle size, leaves almost no monomer in the toner, and does not require use of a surfactant.